Authors: Elizabeth Essex
In the long hour they had spent with the washerwoman, morning had broken across London. The summer sun was up, and somewhere, either in Mayfair or in Richmond, a murderer was still breathing freely, enjoying the morning in a way that neither the dead Maisy Carter, nor her mother, nor even the damaged Lady Claire Jellicoe ever would again.
Tanner had not imagined the way she had flinched away from him. He had not imagined the febrile heat of fear that left her cold in his arms. He had seen and felt it, and it slayed and enraged him all at the same time. But it gave him purpose, that flinch.
“The game has been afoot for hours, and the trail is growing cold,” he told Claire. “Every minute that passes since the moment Maisy Carter was murdered means it will be harder to find answers. We have to act, and act swiftly. Thanks to you, we have a new name, and a new direction.”
“You are most welcome.” The small pleasure of her smile was a gift to him. But Lady Claire must have heard something else besides praise in his voice. “Did you not expect Molly Carter to be able to help us?”
As much as he derided the glaring faults and weaknesses he saw in himself, he had to acknowledge them. And one of his faults was that he always assumed his way was best—he always assumed he was the most clever person in any room, in any given situation. The only person he had ever deferred to was his sister. The only person he had felt his equal in intellect was Jack.
And now Lady Claire Jellicoe had just proved that intellect was not enough. She had gifts that were entirely different. And entirely lacking in him.
And he needed to acknowledge that. “You handled Molly Carter superbly. Far better than I had expected. Far and above what I would have accomplished on my own. I never would have gotten her to talk. And if you hadn’t gotten her to talk, she never would have seen the fob, and never would have mentioned the Honorable Edward Layham.”
Claire’s pleasure added warm color to her already livid cheek. “Thank you. I wasn’t thinking about the information, really. I just did what I felt was right, but I’m glad it yielded a good result.”
“A very good result. Come.” He steered her around a corner. “This way.”
To free them of the Almonry’s narrow, sloping streets, Tanner turned them east on Orchard Street, moving swiftly into the wider, less dangerous stretch of Dean Street. Claire kept his pace, striding along by his side, looking decidedly more confident than she had an hour ago going into the Almonry. Her head was up, and she was gazing more resolutely at the filth and poverty now, though in the sharp morning sun the scratches and bruises on her cheek looked far more livid than they had in the gray light of dawn
And with her confidence came her formidible intelligence. “I’ve been thinking about that fob, Tanner. I’ve been thinking that there can’t be too many places, or dealers perhaps, that deal in ancient Roman coins.”
So had he. But she had just called him Tanner, and the appellation set up a buzzing in his brain that extended outward from his chest. God help him, but her acceptance of him—glaring faults and all—excited him as much as her cleverness. His attraction to her was a itchy, warm vibration that worked its way down into his gut and back out to his fingertips. An excitement that could only be assuaged by easing his arm over her shoulder and urging her snug up against him.
He liked this leaning down to speak low into her ear. “Yes, exactly. That kind of gold work—custom fitting an irregular ancient coin into a framework—would take skill. There are only four or perhaps five firms in London that deal—honestly—in those kinds of rare numismatics.”
She was more amused than excited, but she did not object to his presumption—she relaxed her slight weight into him readily enough. “What a compendium of London’s firms you must have in that head of yours. So, we should visit them first, one by one, until we find the right firm?”
“I have another idea. I know a fellow in the City who should be able to tell us exactly what we need to know.”
“And what a compendium of interesting people you know, as well. Not at all the usual acquaintances for a duke.” She was smiling and shaking her head in her amusement—for the first time truly at ease with him. Happy.
Yes. The welcome jolt of fist-clenching pure male triumph that shot through his chest was more than just his savage pride. More than mere physical arousal. It was bone-deep pleasure for her sake as well.
And it made him want to please, and amuse, and put her at ease even more. “I told you, I wasn’t always a duke. And because of that, the Honorable Edward Layham has heretofore escaped my rather encyclopedic eye.”
“But not mine.”
Unlike him, Lady Claire inhabited society as a familiar. She would naturally see things and people very differently than he. He was learning that it was very useful to have another person’s opinion as a comparison.
She pleated her pristine forehead with that adorable little frown of concentration. “I am not formally acquainted with him, but I know him by sight. Rather short man. Looks like a small badger.”
“Excellent. What else?”
“Solid country gentry, if I recall correctly. Suffolk. Middle-aged, married man. Wife stays in the country. Third or fourth son of Lord Layham, whose heir has sons of his own, so I don’t think Mr. Edward is in any real line for the title. Don’t think he’s an ally of my father’s in Lords. Don’t think he’s political at all, really. He’s too young to be one of my father’s set, and too old to be one of my brothers’.”
“You see? You knew more than you thought you did. That was a very clever assessment.” He gave her the compliment not only because it was true but also because it gave him the opportunity to watch her cheeks grow pink with becoming color. He gave her the compliment because it gave him the opportunity to be a better man. For her. “So those are our choices at the moment—find out more about the fob, or find out more about the man.” He turned his head to face her. “Claire, what do you think we should do?”
* * *
Claire stilled—or would have stilled if his arm had not been around her shoulders and not carried her along with his momentum. But she felt light and suspended again, as if the entirety of the earth had just narrowed to the two of them, alone together in the middle of the wide churchyard of the Abbey. She could barely feel her feet touching the ground. And all she could see and feel was this strange and wonderful and warm man asking her what
she
thought they should do.
It was an idea and an offer so foreign to her existence that for the longest moment she could do nothing as the pleasure slid through her, as slow and warm and golden and sweet as honey. And she knew that something within her had shifted. She knew that she would never be the same girl she had been last night—that she was somehow older and wiser. Because she knew without a doubt that she was falling in love. With His strange, wonderful Grace the Duke of Fenmore.
All because he had
asked
her. And protected her. And laid Lord Peter Rosing out like an undertaker.
“Claire?”
And she was falling just a little bit in love with him because she thought she understood what it cost him to ask for her help, and her opinion. He was a man of ferocious intellect, a man who was quite used to making his own decisions—who was quite used to drawing his own correct assumptions, and making his own lightning-quick decisions. For him to ask her, to solicit and consult her opinion, seemed entirely out of character.
Or was it? “Why are you asking me?”
He tipped his head from side to side as if he were uncomfortable—stripped of his usual surety like a schoolboy caught doing something he knows he oughtn’t. He frowned, a ferocious scowl clawing its way between his brows, and then shrugged as if it didn’t matter. But his answer was telling: “Isn’t that what people do when they respect each other—ask their opinion?”
Oh, it was lovelier still, this feeling of gratitude and esteem and pride all blossoming in her belly in a spate of warmth and happiness. His esteem was indeed a heady, heady, intoxicating prize.
In her world,
respect
was a word that meant money and position and power and reputation. It was the water on the surface of a pond—one’s job in life was not to ruffle those waters, to make it all look effortless and easy. This past night and morning, which might yet see her reputation in tatters, she had done nothing but agitate the waters—allowing herself to be compromised by a known debaucher, running away with His Grace, involving herself in the investigation of the murder of a young maid, traipsing across the countryside and half of London Town. She had done everything her upbringing had told her not to do.
And still, somehow, he esteemed her.
It was as if she had been fed a food she had not known she craved. It left her hungry for more.
“Yes,” she answered him. “That is what people who esteem each other do. Thank you. I am very sensible of the honor you do me.” And she returned it. “So how to decide?” she mused aloud. She took a deep breath, as if the damp morning air could clear both her mind and her lungs of the lingering aftereffects of such unsettling pleasure. “It seems to me we don’t know where to find Mr. Layham, while you
do
know where to find your friend who knows a thing or two about Roman coins.”
“Yes. But my friend is all the way in the City, which will mean another ride downriver, while Layham ought to be closer at hand in Mayfair.”
“But if we need to go by river—is the tide still running out?”
He smiled—that sharp little smile of admiration that told her she was right. “Just.”
“Then I suppose we’d best go with the tide while we can. And then we can return to Charing Cross and Mayfair more easily after the tide turns and runs upriver.” First the Almonry and now the City. The financial district at the heart of the ancient city of London was, in the Jellicoe family, the sole purvey of the earl and his heir. Claire doubted her mother and even her two other brothers had ever had occasion to go into the City. In Mayfair, the City came to them, rather than the other way round. But today she was determined to be brave. “Well, I’ve never been to the City. It seems a good day for it.”
And frankly, she did not want to go to Mayfair. Not yet. Mayfair was almost too familiar, and she was too familiar in Mayfair. Even dressed as she was, people were bound to recognize her.
Tanner did not try to dissuade her. “All right.” He accepted her decision with equanimity, and pointed the way up the street. “We go east, back to the water stair.”
“Oh, but I forgot Lark may have gone, and taken the boat.”
“Ah. Yes.” His smile broadened across his face. “But there are other ways. Have you never, in all your days in London, taken a wherry?”
“No.” She had never traveled by any accommodation but private carriage. She had never set foot inside anything so humble as a hackney carriage, let alone a boat for public hire. But it was a new day. “But it seems an excellent adventure.”
His smile was deeply amused, and entirely complicit. “That’s my girl.”
Was she his girl? She hardly knew—he said it so casually, so in tune with his rough-and-tumble persona, that she could not tell what he was thinking.
“Wooden Bridge Stairs.” He strode onward, his long, swinging stride eating up ground.
She had to skip to keep up, but the happy, bouncing stride suited her expansive mood. “I am glad we are doing this. Glad to be doing something instead of sitting at home, letting other people do things for me.”
“I can’t think of another lass who would have done so well. You’ve been very…” He paused, as if he were searching for the right word. “Courageous.”
A very flattering word. But, alas, not entirely a true one. “Not I,” she declared. “My heart was pounding away the whole time we were in the Almonry.”
“And that is courage,” he insisted. “And I admire you greatly for it. And your compassion. Talking to Molly Carter like that—getting her to talk to you and tell you important things—”
“Were they important things?”
“Everything you got her to say was important. Even if it confirmed things I already knew. Everything has value. Everyone has value. You’re a rare genuine person, Claire. And I admire you greatly.”
It was a lovely thing to hear. And very lovely to feel valued for who she was, not just for her face, or her station, or her family’s fortune. “I’m glad.” It was a very heady thing, his admiration. It was lovely and warm and easy. “I admire you as well.”
They approached the water steps and Tanner took her hand to help her into the vessel, but she held on to it as long as she could, liking the warm feeling of connection. Liking his calm, reassuring touch.
He gave their destination. “White Lion Wharf.”
The boat felt almost familiar now. Or at least the motion of the vessel was familiar, though this one was for public hire, with two weathered old watermen at the oars, squinting at her in the cool morning light, as inscrutably as the Duke of Fenmore ever had.
But Claire was no longer willing to be intimidated by their stares. She put her chin and bruised cheek in the air, and looked inscrutable right back.
They shot out into the swift water at Westminster Bridge, and around the great sweep in the wide river toward the City. The city—her city, in which she had lived for a good half of the year, every year of her life, and the city she thought she knew—looked incredibly different from the vantage of the bright, gleaming river. Across the water, the low, hulking outlines of the buildings were illuminated by the crystalline light that shimmered along the reflected surface of the water. It was magical and different and made her feel alive, and happy and privileged to live in such a place—the center of the entire world.
The euphoric feeling might also have been due to the fact that she was snugged up close to Tanner, who retained the rough-and-tumble persona he had employed on the street when he had pulled her close, and told her she was to be his girl.
His nearness made her feel as if she had drunk too much of the chilled summer wine they had been serving on trays at Riverchon Park. But she hadn’t drunk any wine. She was drunk on his presence, his attention. His esteem.